Beyond the Beyond: Children Remembering Past Lives – The Self That Survives

Beyond the Beyond: Children Remembering Past Lives – The Self That Survives

A memory with no origin, a certainty you’ve had the same experience before, a feeling like you know someone the first time you meet them. Maybe many have experienced these things, or maybe it’s just me. But it’s not. These experiences are shared across countries, cultures, and generations. They’re often not grand notions of having lived a life before, but are many times fleeting feelings, like déjà vu, that wash over the body and are gone as fast as they came.

This isn’t some new age idea that popped up in the last century, but something thousands of years old, and shared across social systems that appear to be entirely independent of one another. Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Greek philosophers, Celts, and some indigenous and tribal cultures – even early Christian thinkers such as Origen – entertained the idea of the soul existing before birth.

Some carry unexplained birthmarks or scars and have deep-seated phobias with no traumatic source. Some children around the world have even told their parents about remembering who they were in a past life. In Louisiana, a young boy named James Leininger started exhibiting strange behaviors when he was just two years old. He had vivid and recurring nightmares about being in a plane that was under attack and on fire by enemy forces. His parents asked him to draw what he was experiencing on a piece of paper, and he began drawing detailed fighter planes, occasionally writing names like “Natoma” or “Natoma Bay” on them. He soon began insisting that he had once been a pilot named James Huston Jr., who had perished during World War II. Open-minded and curious, his parents began researching at their local library and found that indeed there was a pilot named James Huston Jr. who had died in combat over Iwo Jima.

A girl in Delhi named Shanti Devi began describing what she called a “previous life” at the age of four. She claimed to be from a small town called Mathura and knew the house she had lived in, her husband’s and children’s names, and even her day-to-day routines, many of which her parents claimed she had no way of knowing. Her case was investigated by a commission formed by Mahatma Gandhi, who considered it credible. When investigators took her to the town, she led them right to the house she had told her parents about.

A Thai boy remembered being a snake in a past life. He claimed he had been run over by a car. A large, tire-track-like birthmark descended down the side of his body. In Myanmar, a boy with a large birthmark on his chest claimed to have been killed by a shotgun blast in his past life. He recounted personal details that many in the town corroborated, even though they supposedly knew the man and had never met the boy. Within the Druze community, belief in reincarnation is common. A young boy born with a long mark on his head claimed that he had been killed with an axe in a previous life. He led adults to the precise spot where the death had occurred and named the person responsible, who is said to have later confessed.

These are just some of hundreds of examples of children remembering their past lives, but what of the untold number of children and parents who have never come forward? What of those whose tales were dismissed as the product of a young person’s overactive imagination? Researchers like Dr. Ian Stevenson and Dr. Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia documented thousands of cases worldwide. Many of these children had no possible access to the information through books, media, or family stories. So what exactly is going on here?

Skeptics argue that children may absorb information unconsciously from conversations, media, books, or stories, then recall it as if it were their own experience. As anyone with children knows, children – even toddlers – are like little sponges when it comes to picking up information. Even when you think they aren’t listening, they may be. Couple adult conversations with media that may be playing in the background, and it could lead to wild stories about lives once lived. Maybe some parents have encouraged these tales, or maybe they unwittingly prompt them with questions, guiding them toward the “memories” they eventually describe to the adult or investigator.

Or maybe it’s all real: memories that are quite literally echoes of some other life. Ones that hint at something larger than the single lifetimes that we inhabit. Something that carries our consciousness beyond birth and death. If there is truth to it, then every life we live may be just one chapter in a much larger story. The decisions we make and our own experiences may echo far beyond what we can see.

Do you remember your past life? Message @beyondthebeyond1 on Instagram.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Eastern Sierra Now. Readers are encouraged to conduct further research and consult with relevant experts or professionals before making any decisions or taking any actions based on the information provided in this article.

–

Catch up on more “Beyond the Beyond” here.

TM Rush